This is not that. This is the road not taken, at least not by IBM and compatibles.
At the time, Microsoft assumed that DOS as we know it would never live past version 3. This was their idea of what DOS 4 should be. A new major version breaking strict compatibility. What we know as OS/2 1.x was originally named DOS 5, another new major "DOS" version breaking strict compatibility.
This Multitasking MS-DOS never took off except in niche applications, and OS/2 eventually got its own product name which is why there were then regular DOS releases 4 and 5 followed by 6 and eventually 7 become part of Windows 95.